January 7, 2016

Social media updates & Instagram

I have back and forth with a friend about photographic self-promotion and realized that now would be a good time to provide an update on my own efforts. Today of course the buzz word for (self) promotion is Social Media, so that is primarily where I post my photographs.

You are reading this blog which has seen its ups and downs over the years that I launched it. I am actually the Editor and Founder of three blogs, this one, The PhotoBook about my thoughts on photobooks that I started shortly after this one, and The PhotoExchange for a group of photographers who meet monthly at the Irvine Fine Art Center (Irvine, CA) to discuss and share photographs. This is the only blog that I post my own photographs, so as far as I am concerned, this is my primary self-promo blog.

I jumped onto Facebook many years ago, initially a place for me, but then a fan page for the The Photobook blog. Recently I was made the Co-Editor of the Facebook page for The Photograhers Exchange. I am probably more addicted to Facebook than any others at the moment. Fb is also a place where I found a number of photobook discussion forums that I find interesting, although these have become more self-promotion about book publications and sales than actual “discussions”. Oh well, things evolve.

I have been using LinkedIn for a while, first was a personal profile to support my day-job as a pharmaceutical consultant. Then I decided that it might be a bit confusing to intertwine my photographic interests, thus I have a photographic LinkedIn profile under Doug Stockdale. If you are poking LinkedIn and find someone who might be me, make sure it has a lot of photographic interests. Btw, I do not post very much on LinkedIn as it does not appear to be a good fit with promoting your photographs. Maybe some are better at this on LinkedIn than I am and would be interested to hear your stories.

I am also on Google+, but again, I do not post here very often, but that might change this year. As a result, I do not have very many followers or am I following very many others. Perhaps a New Years resolution in the making!

I have an ambiguous profile on Tumblr, but after poking this site for a while, I am not actively using it. I have never twitter-fied, so no tweets.

New for 2016 is a profile on Instagram @douglasstockdale. A bit like this blog, well suited for single images, but not much for a long post & more like Facebook. Nice that I can post on Instagram and add Facebook to the post, saves a little bit of time. If I post something of interest on this blog, I usually provide a link back to the same photo on Facebook, which I can still do with a Instragram-Facebook post, then edit the Facebook post. I may be able to do something similar with Instagram, but I am just now coming up to speed on that app.

As to the photograph above we are now experiencing some rainy days, a bit unusual for many years here in SoCal. Noticing the wet reflections on the back patio and the fallen leaves, I could not help myself. It has a bit of that 1960’s look when wet reflections became the rage. A straight photograph with the Samsung phone-camera that appears a bit abstract and mysterious. On Instagram-Facebook, I inverted this same image but as a color photo, which is a bit more muted and probably a bit disorienting.